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Deeplinks Blog

Deeplinks Blog

In August, EFF unveiled our ninth limited edition DEF CON exclusive member t-shirt. Like previous years, the design of this year’s shirt was inspired by the conference’s theme, 1983. That number isn’t just the year before 1984. It was also the year a brilliant artist named Keith Haring...

Over the weekend, Gov. Jerry Brown signed S.B. 822, which guarantees strong net neutrality protections for citizens of California. Within hours, however, the federal government announced its intention to sue California for stepping in where the feds have abdicated responsibility. What happens next is going to be full of procedural...

You shouldn’t be convicted by secret evidence in a functional democracy. So when the government uses forensic software to investigate and build its case in a criminal prosecution, it should not hide that technological evidence from the defense. In an amicus brief filed today EFF urged the Ninth Circuit...

The people of California will now have more insight into how their local law enforcement agencies operate. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed S.B. 978, which requires local police departments to publish their “training, policies, practices, and operating procedures” on their websites starting in January 2020. That opens up...

California Gov. Jerry Brown has a signed a bill into law that opens up the Internet for youth in state care. With A.B. 2448, California now requires that all youth in juvenile hall be granted access to the Internet for educational purposes. Meanwhile youth in foster care...

EFF has presented its full evidentiary case that the five ordinary Americans who are plaintiffs in Jewel v. NSA were among the hundreds of millions of nonsuspect Americans whose communications and communications records have been touched by the government’s mass surveillance regimes. This presentation includes a new...

The ability to vote for local, state, and federal representatives is the cornerstone of democracy in America. With mid-term congressional elections looming in early November, many voices have raised concerns that the voting infrastructure used by states across the Union might be suspect, unreliable, or potentially vulnerable to attacks. As...

California's kids now have common-sense protections against unwarranted DNA collection. Gov. Jerry Brown this week signed A.B. 1584, a new law requiring law enforcement to get either judicial approval or permission from both the minor and a parent, legal guardian, or attorney before collecting a DNA sample from...

If you found yourself logged out of Facebook this morning, you were in good company. Facebook forced more than 90 million Facebook users to log out and back into their accounts Friday morning in response to a massive data breach. According to Facebook’s announcement, it detected...

While there may not be consensus on what they are, there is a shared belief that U.S. copyright law has some serious problems. But the CASE Act, which aims to treat copyright claims like traffic tickets, is not the answer. On Thursday, August 27, the House Judiciary Committee held a...

This month’s stupid patent describes an invention that will be familiar to many readers: a virtual reality (VR) system where participants can interact with a virtual world and each other. US Patent No. 6,409,599 is titled “Interactive virtual reality performance theater entertainment system.” Does the ’599 patent belong...

Add “a phone number I never gave Facebook for targeted advertising” to the list of deceptive and invasive ways Facebook makes money off your personal information. Contrary to user expectations and Facebook representatives’ own previous statements, the company has been using contact information that users explicitly provided for security purposes—or...

Data brokers intrude on the privacy of millions of people by harvesting and monetizing their personal information without their knowledge or consent. Worse, many data brokers fail to securely store this sensitive information, predictably leading to data breaches (likeEquifax) that put millions of people at risk of...

There’s a lot of talk these days about “content moderation.” Policymakers, some public interest groups, and even some users are clamoring for intermediaries to do “more,” to make the Internet more “civil,” though there are wildly divergent views on what that “more” should be. Others vigorously oppose such moderation, arguing...